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About the Southern Plains Climate Hub

*Web page under construction, more to be added soon.*

Who?

The Southern Plains Climate Hub is a collaborative effort, with time and resources provided by scientists and staff from 9 USDA laboratories and centers, supported by ongoing research and development efforts at more than 20 other USDA units.

Where?

The Southern Plains Climate Hub is physically located at the Grazinglands Research Laboratory near El Reno, OK.

Our region of responsibility includes Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.But because climate-change related challenges for agriculture don’t stop at state or national lines, we plan to collaborate with all of our neighboring Climate Hubs, as well as interested groups and scientists in surrounding states and Mexico.

Why?

Because we have problems in Southern Plains agriculture resulting from accelerating climate change that can only by solved by significant collaborative effort.

A large number of federal and state agencies, as well as Native American tribes, private agencies, cooperatives, and other conservation groups are working on aspects of the problem…so many that it is hard to know who to go to for what issue. That is one of the primary reasons for establishing the Southern Plains Climate Hub – to provide the basic service of connecting all the people working on this huge collection of linked challenges in this region.Another is to make sure that knowledge is provided to farmers, ranchers, foresters in the most efficient manner possible.

All of the existing climate change-related activities will benefit from increased collaboration.We also need to understand where to put our collective efforts next, to best effect.So our initial Southern Plains Climate Hub efforts will involve building a Directory, a “Who’s Who” of those working on mitigating or adapting to the effects of climate change on agriculture, and through agriculture, on our natural resources of soil, water, clean air.We will also develop a working list of open problems and related research.

We plan to use this website to make it easier for everyone to find us and connect with us.All of this will take time to build, but we have begun.